Lars Jan

LARS JAN is a director, designer, writer, and media artist.

Lars is a 2000 graduate of Swarthmore College and completed his MFA in Directing and Integrated Media at CalArts with the support of a Jack Kent Cooke Fellowship. Lars is the recipient of the 2008 Sherwood Award, granted by Center Theatre Group to an innovative theatre artist in Los Angeles.

He has created new work and taught in residence at Princeton University's Atelier Program as well as at Mount Holyoke, Swarthmore, and Amherst Colleges. The son of first generation émigrés from Afghanistan and Poland, Lars is committed to international artistic research and exchange. He has studied and worked extensively in Japan (Tondo Ningyo Joruri Theatre, 2003-04), Afghanistan (2005), and Ukraine. In 2009 and 2010, Lars Jan researched and created new works while a resident fellow at The MacDowell Colony (Peterborough, NH), EMPAC (Troy, NY), Brookfield Properties Arts Program (Los Angeles, CA) and The Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography (MANCC; Tallahassee, FL). His work has been supported several times by the Swarthmore Project in Theater. His original performance, film, and installation works have been seen at The Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, 2005/2010), Symphony Space (New York, 2005), REDCAT (Los Angeles, 2006/2009), PianoSpheres (Los Angeles, 2010), The Kirk Douglas Theatre (Los Angeles, 2010), The Philadelphia Live Arts Festival (2004-2010), and The Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at RPI (Troy, NY, 2010).

He is the founding artistic director of Early Morning Opera, a multi-disciplinary art lab based in Los Angeles that specializes in live performance. He will premiere selections of a new opera, Makandal, at Art Basel (Miami) in December 2010.

In Spring 2011, he will be directing Production Ensemble (THEA 022) for the Department of Theater.

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